Check out, on YouTube, “Freckled Face Mary Jane,” Ernest V. “Pop” Stoneman, OKeh 40312-B, copyright 8 January 1925, recorded in New York. Stoneman is said to have suggested to Ralph Peer that he record in Bristol, Tennessee, which is where Peer first recorded Jimmy Rodgers. Stoneman sang and played harmonica and autoharp on the record. (I think he was the second [posthumous] member of the Autoharp Hall of Fame—Mabelle Carter was the first. Pop Stoneman and his large family were huge in country music and bluegrass for decades. The melody is about the same as that bluegrass standard “Jesse James.” I don’t know if Stoneman wrote the lyrics, but they are the earliest I’ve found. Like A.P. Carter, he tended to “borrow” other people’s songs and copyright them.